Kukla's Korner Hockey

NEW YORK (Jan. 6, 2009)—The game’s most dazzling shootout artists will attempt to wow the voting public in the Scotiabank NHL Fan Fav Breakaway Challenge and the classes of 2007-08 and 2008-09 will battle for youthful supremacy when NHL All-Star Weekend gets underway with the 2009 Honda/NHL All-Star SuperSkills Competition Saturday night, Jan. 24, at Montreal’s Bell Centre.

The realigned NHL YoungStars Game presented by Upper Deck and the fan-judged Scotiabank NHL Fan Fav Breakaway Challenge will join SuperSkills mainstays such as the Bridgestone NHL Fastest Skater, McDonald’s NHL Accuracy Shooting and Cisco NHL Hardest Shot competitions to determine the League’s best in various disciplines. The evening will culminate with the best hockey players in the world doing what they’ve done to end practices ever since shortly after their parents first tied their skates: engage in an elimination shootout contest that won’t end until there’s only one man left unstopped.

Note: Competition results for 1990-2008 noted below.

To open the evening, four of the League’s speedsters will take the Bell Centre ice in an attempt to beat Mike Gartner’s 13-year-old record for the fastest (13.386 seconds) circuit of an NHL rink in the Bridgestone NHL Fastest Skater.

The stopwatches then get pocketed and the imaginations get set free when six of the NHL’s most creative players try to win the votes of fans by performing feats of puck-handling and goal-scoring wizardry in the Scotiabank NHL Fan Fav Breakaway Challenge. With full access to the entire offensive zone, each shooter gets one minute to complete as many attempts as possible at a routine that ends with a shot on goal. Once all six skaters have performed, fans will vote by mobile text message to determine the winner.

Next up, the top young players in the game will take center stage in the sixth NHL YoungStars Game presented by Upper Deck. This year, for the first time, the non-stop, wide-open game of three-on-three will pit NHL sophomores against rookies.

After the League’s sharpshooters pick corners in the McDonald’s NHL Accuracy Shooting, the boomers will blast away in the Cisco NHL Hardest Shot in an attempt to break the record set by Al Iafrate with a 105.2-mph slap shot at the 1993 NHL All-Star Weekend in Montreal.

Finally, all 36 skaters and six goalies will play the time-honored game of hockey survivor—the Gatorade NHL Elimination Shootout. The six All-Star goalies will conduct a random draw to select the six shooters each will face in the first round. Only the shooters who score will advance. The competition will continue until a round is completed in which only one shooter scores.